Matchmaker à Trois
by Omnicat
Summary: When Middie was ten, there was a boy. When she is twenty-five, there are two men. In the years between, she had brought herself to ruin. A kiss won't make an old wound better, but an extra pair of hands to help pick up the pieces wouldn't be so bad. / 3x4, 4x12, 3x12, 3x4x12


**Title:** Matchmaker à Trois

**Author:** Omnicat

**Unofficially Adapted From:** Masashi Ikeda & co's _Gundam Wing_ & _Episode Zero_

**Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** All of the above.

**Warnings:** War-related angst everywhere, one reconstruction of past violence with lasting physical damage, sex, booze, some strong language.

**Characters & Pairings:** Middie x Trowa x Quatre in every possible combination.

**Summary:** When Middie was ten, there was a boy. When she is twenty-five, there are two men. In the years between, she had brought herself to ruin. A kiss won't make an old wound better, but an extra pair of hands to help pick up the pieces wouldn't be so bad.

**Author's Note:** Written for the 2011 Church of Lemons, an annual het lemon event that's up to its tenth consequitive year this year. It's mostly _Gundam Wing_ and 1xR centered, but all GW het ships that don't disrupt 1xR, as well as all het ships from several other animanga fandoms (this year including Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Princess Tutu), are welcome. The 2012 Church of Lemons will kick off in early February, and if you're interested, details about how it works and how you can sign up are in my profile.

NOTE: In keeping with its origins and to comply by the rules of the site hosting it, the Church of Lemons is a strictly het-only event. This version of "Matchmaker à Trois", obviously, is not. I wrote both a het and a bi version of this thing because I basically couldn't decide which I wanted to do more. 8D;;

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**Matchmaker à Trois**

"What are you doing here?"

Those were the first words said. Or maybe the first that mattered; the first that didn't come from his eyes and weren't answered all over her face.

_No,_ Middie thought, _no, no, shit, hell no._

_Can't be,_ Trowa thought, _there's just no way._

But _yes_, they both knew.

No-one else would look back at them like that. They were alone - no, had been, _had been_ alone - two and no more, lost in a world of _adults_, hard and cold and inhuman. Only in the eyes of each other could they pretend to have a chance at being anything different.

"I'm here to get people killed," she answered at long last.

She wondered - was this what it felt like to be one of the living dead, or rather the recently resurrected? Her head was spinning and she could barely feel her heart beat.

He wondered - _everything_. All the questions he had sworn off before he turned ten (why? why him, why this? _why him?_) came back to him in one suffocating moment.

"No you're not," he countered numbly.

He looked over her work attire, briefcase, grocery bag, the shadows under her eyes. She looked every inch the settled nine-to-fiver in a job she brought home with her every day, and she'd reacted like she hadn't looked over her shoulder in years.

_But what else could I be doing here, or anywhere?_ she thought to herself.

His posture was stiff, his repetition flat: "What are you doing here?"

Then, as suddenly as they had fallen away, the fifteen years since she had last seen No-Name snapped back into place. She still didn't know what to say, cold panic drowning out most everything else, and she decided that the stupid question was to blame.

"It's hard to find work on Earth without any diplomas," she offered, and waited for him to explain what had driven _him_ into outer space.

This time his eyes went down her shoulder and leg, which she was certain (rightfully so) he had noticed the stiffness of as he spotted her moving in and out of puddles of street light. He understood, because he had been raised to believe that the Earth was a place where only the strong survived and space a place for second chances and new beginnings, which he was certain she remembered. (She did.)

He produced a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to her.

"I'm with a travelling circus. You should come see us while we're here," he said, almost managing not to second-guess his reasons.

**I-oOo-I**

Fifteen years had done nothing to make her forget, let alone heal. It was hard to tell from the inside of her now continuously scattered brain, but it was easy to deduce from the fact that she had gone to see his show and was now in the caravan he called his home, drinking beer like it was poison and making small talk about the colony like it was normal.

Not surprisingly, the small talk dried up quickly.

"So how'd this happen," he asked instead, bumping knees with her.

She took a swig and stared at the opposite wall. "Traffic accident."

"Accident." He made it sound like the bullshit it was.

"Well, I didn't _mean_ to get run over with a crowbar," she said, slowly and too evenly.

He was silent for a moment. She diverted her eyes again. He was silent for a moment longer.

Then: "Are there scars?"

"Yes."

"Can I see them?"

A defiant gesture tightened her mouth. "What if I say no."

"Then I'm left with just my imagination."

She gave him a long, hard look, the kind that made scarfaced thugs in bars squirm with disquiet, and only stopped when she remembered that it would never work on No-Name - nor Trowa Barton, stunt clown and official little brother figure to the only knife thrower in the Earth Sphere with eyes sharper than her knives.

Her sweater was wide and stretchy, enough so to slide down all but one of the messy white lines; when he'd had his eyeful of them she covered back up and pulled down her slacks. He put on an extra light and got down on one knee for _that_, but he didn't touch her as he studied the scars littering her leg.

"When are you going to do it?" she found herself whispering after a while, even though she dreaded knowing whether she would be relieved or disappointed.

He looked up. "Do what?"

One more time. _Walk away. Stand up and walk. Maybe he won't follow you out. Shake him, avoid him until the circus moves again, you know how. You don't _really_ want to die._

_You _really_ don't want that world to come alive again._

She clarified herself over the edge of the cliff: "Kill me."

He gave her the unnerving war child look right back. "I'm not."

For a moment, her heart stopped.

And it started beating again.

**I-oOo-I**

Once she was gone, Trowa lay back on his bed with his eyes closed and his arms crossed behind his head, and imagined how the crowbar of karma had left its marks in Middie's flesh. The wounds were all on the right side of her body, so he figured that whoever did it beat her to the ground first, kicked her against a wall and into a corner, and only took up the weapon when their own limbs could no longer contain their rage. He took his time reconstructing every rent in her skin, the tear of every ruined muscle, every sickening crunch of her bones.

He derived no enjoyment from the thought.

He'd told her the truth.

He covered his face with his hands and let out a breath he had been holding more than half his life.

**I-oOo-I**

When he slipped into the office, Quatre and Middie were standing just _that_ bit too closely together, and they startled in a tell-tale way.

"Trowa!" Quatre grinned and approached in open-armed welcome nonetheless. "You're already here."

"You work _here?_" Trowa said at the same time, while it was Middie's turn for a "What the hell are you doing here?"

Quatre looked from one to the other. "You two know each other?"

There were awkward stares all around.

"Middie and I are old acquaintances."

"Middie is my personal assistant."

Their eyes turned to her.

"What?" She stared back. "You already said it."

**I-oOo-I**

The day had gone steeply downhill from there. There was a charge and weight of decades between them, memories they had carried long enough to have forgotten what life was like without it, ones that they could handle, maybe one day even... solve? Cure?

Quatre, though.

Quatre was the opposite of everything Middie and No-Name shared. He destroyed every law of nature that had, could, and would exist between them. Quatre was his, Quatre was hers, but he couldn't be - _they_ couldn't be. Quatre couldn't be _theirs_. The two of them couldn't be in the same room when Quatre was there - and they didn't have to, but it quickly became clear that they couldn't be in the same building either. They couldn't exist in the same _reality_ when Quatre was there.

But there was no other reality to be had, was there?

"Hey. Hey. Come on, slow down. Hey!"

"There's nobody with that name here."

"Come on. Come on." The curb would one day kill her. Today, it tripped her up, stole the skin from her palms, sent her briefcase skittering along the pavement. She felt the muscles in her face contort and something inside of her crumble, and cried: _"Trowa!"_

He only turned around because she finally used the name he'd chosen for himself, and that made her heart bleed in a way she thought it had forgotten how to years ago. Pressing her fingers to her temples, she squeezed her eyes shut, not knowing what else to do with these tears.

"_I'm sorry,"_ she choked. "I'm sorry, alright. I'll never stop being sorry."

People were staring. For a while, Trowa was staring. Angry and humiliated, Middie bent toward her briefcase and tried to scrub the urge to cry from her face. There had to be something she could say or do to fix the stupidity of this moment, to fix _everything_, but nothing came to her.

Nothing ever did.

Trowa held out his hand.

"I'm not mad," he said, voice even softer than the grip that lifted her back to her feet. "It was war, we were enemies. That's what happens."

She wiped her nose helplessly. "I hate you."

"I remember." Lips curling, he gently wiped away her tears. "Where do you live? I'll give you a ride."

Middie was so overcome by his smile that she let him.

Her back was to him as she struggled out of her coat, so he startled her a bit when he moved in to help and said: "Seemed to me you and Quatre get along well."

She let out a breath she hadn't thought she'd been holding.

"He's my boss," she said, her throat dry. "It's never happening."

Leaving her coat on its hook, Trowa's hands returned. One brushed aside her hair and the other traced her scars through the silk of her blouse while he kissed her neck. "Can I see them again?"

Shivering, she led him inside.

She let him take off her blouse and bra and press over her on her bed, his legs tangled in hers as he propped himself up on one elbow. The fingers of his free hand trailed along every jagged white mark he pressed his lips to, much like and nothing at all like his sister had once done when he had no memory of how he'd gotten his. Childish as the gesture was, it had made him feel better about them, he told Middie. Better was the first step to good, and he wanted to make her feel _good_.

Instead, she pushed him onto his back and eased off his clothes. If anyone deserved to feel good, it was him.

**I-oOo-I**

She couldn't stop thinking of his smile. It was faint now; he was sprawled beside her on his stomach, fast asleep and wheezing slightly. Very carefully, she traced his soft, slack mouth, lips that had kissed and been kissed. He liked keeping his mouth occupied, she'd noticed, so she'd made sure to find ways to. But when he came, he had just smiled. Smiled and played with her hair, every inch of him mild and gentle and lazy, until he slipped under in his own fuzziness and dozed off.

In the months they'd spent together as children, he had never smiled. In the many nightmares she'd had since that time, he had never smiled. She hadn't thought him capable of something so human and carefree, not before and certainly not after.

For the first time, she found herself able to believe she had not destroyed him utterly and irreparably. How had the nameless, empty little lost boy she remembered grown into someone so kind and forgiving?

All it took was a smile and she'd fallen in love with him all over again.

She poked his ribs until he stirred. "You gonna stay the night?"

"Mmng, better tell Cathy before she calls the cops," he rumbled dazedly, rolling over and dropping his legs off the edge of the bed. "Where's the phone?"

"Kitchen."

He staggered out into the dark, shuffled back in a little while later, slipped under the covers she held open for him and fell asleep with an arm around her waist.

The next morning, she made him breakfast and smiled back.

**I-oOo-I**

Trowa gave her a ride to work after another quick shag that made her shower-wet hair dry up full of weird kinks, and then went back to the circus. There had been no word about a next time, which was fine by Middie. If he had liked it enough to come back, he would come back. If he was satisfied, he wouldn't.

Middie was satisfied. She attached fiercely, but not that easily. Not even to the man who had been the little boy who had made it so. Their lives being what they were, she had trouble imagining a To Be Continued. Yesterday had been the resolution of a story that had gone on too long. If there was no denouement, she would consider this a happy end.

She greeted Quatre with the usual underbelly thrill, but he stopped by her desk with a quizzical look. He leaned in until his hair tickled her cheek and _sniffed_.

"You smell like Trowa."

Middie felt her blood run cold.

"So you two made up?" he asked cheerfully. "I noticed you were tense yesterday."

Middie's lower jaw had ceased operations. It was only with great difficulty that she managed to croak out a "Y - yeah."

"I'm glad," Quatre said with a smaller, more intimate smile, and pecked her on the cheek. He hardly seemed aware he had done it, and left her gaping after him speechlessly.

**I-oOo-I**

Trowa showed up again the very same day, right on time for lunch, and handed her a bag of sandwiches.

She stared at them, part of her dumbstruck, part of her caught in a loop of morbidly embarrassing memory. "What's this for?"

"You made me breakfast, I bring you lunch," he said with a shrug.

Of course Quatre would choose that moment to stick his head around the door of his office, baffling cheerfulness still intact. "What about me?"

"You can buy me lunch and I'll take you out for dinner."

Emerging fully, Quatre's gaze slid from Trowa to Middie. "How about you get me some lunch too and I'll take you both out for dinner."

Trowa's eyes joined Quatre's in boring holes into her. Middie hadn't felt dread like this since she found out she'd been burned on the mission that had made a cripple out of her.

"I think I'll pass. I have a lot of work left to do. _Mister_ Winner." She nodded stiffly, grabbed her jacket downright clumsily. "Trowa." Nodded again and headed for the door.

"Wait, Middie -"

Quatre started after her; she froze with her hand halfway to the doorknob.

"Yes sir?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."

She met his eyes over her shoulder and she tried not to let anything show, but it had been so long since that last job, and so long with Quatre...

"Let her go," Trowa said lowly.

The men exchanged a look that said more than it should've been able to. Then, troubled but sincere, Quatre nodded to Middie. "I'm sorry for disturbing your lunch. Go ahead."

She left while Trowa whispered who-knows-what in his ear.

**I-oOo-I**

"How did you get this number?"

"Cathy's caller ID registry."

"Dammit."

"He's not going to fire you, you know. That's not his style."

"Style? His _style_ is to not cross the line between friendship and flirting. What the hell are you two playing at? He knew you were with me last night and then turned around and does something he should never in a million years -"

"I'm not around much, Middie."

"What?"

"It's complicated. I have a home now, Middie. Trowa Barton has a purpose in life. A sister - an honest-to-god blood relative. And friends, a place to come back to. A place I won't leave. I love Quatre and he loves me, but I'm in L4 once a year at best."

He fell silent, waiting for her to digest that information.

"What does that have to do with me?"

"You're around all year."

_(He loves you too.)_

**I-oOo-I**

Trowa had no intention of letting it end so soon.

They were in Trowa's bed. Middie's left leg was around his waist; the other couldn't comfortably bend in that particular way. Her breath came in time with his movements and her eyelids kept fluttering down.

"You're insane. You're insane. God, my boss is insane."

He let out a grunt against her breast.

She sucked in a breath. "Two of my brothers are in university." Another. "Nacht graduates high school this summer. I don'wanna lose this jo -oh- b."

He raised his head with a groan.

"I told you -"

"It's not right, it's unethical."

"Since when do you care?"

"That's _why_ I care. And -" A sharp gasp, more lines between her clenched eyes. "- _he_ cares."

Trowa could no longer look away from the woman falling to ruins beneath him, that creature of little deaths and rebirth he had always found as beautiful as she was morbid. She had ruined him, had ruined herself, but Quatre -

She hadn't ruined Quatre. Quatre knew all about ruining himself. Put them together, though, and they _built_.

"Idiots, the lot of you."

**I-oOo-I**

Trowa was visiting the office. _Again._ Quatre's video conference with the L1 Minister of Trade should be just about done now. More proof for Middie's theory about Quatre's schedule of business meetings and Trowa meetings was not necessary.

"You again?" she said with a smirk.

"Every moment we can spare." Trowa smirked back, spinning on his heel and slowing his pace as they passed each other in the hallway.

She followed his lead. "You act like you've got only months left to live."

"There's nothing quite like getting to touch each other after months of vidcalls, emails and ESP."

"Spare me the details. I've gotta catch up on all the work Quatre isn't doing while you're here."

"Come see the late show tomorrow," he implored.

She grinned involuntarily and said, perhaps a little more loudly than necessary even at their distance: "Fine, you slut."

He smirked again. "Mating season's no time for solitude."

**I-oOo-I**

They stared at each other.

"This is a set-up," Middie concluded. "I should've known."

Quatre looked apologetic; he was annoyingly good at that. "It is. I'm sorry, I don't know what's gotten into me lately."

She raised an eyebrow, startling a little laugh out of him.

"Well, other than _that_."

She looked around, scanning the thickening crowd for couples. Then she realised that that was what she was doing, shook her head, and despite herself, gave Quatre a smile. It was made of butterflies.

"I guess there's no use avoiding each other now. Shall we get a seat?"

"Yeah." He immediately brightened, in that adorable way that always took her by surprise after a long day of watching him be the no-nonsense businessman. "After you."

They found two nice spots and settled down to enjoy Trowa's family's many talents. It was more comfortable than it should be, even comfortable enough to make a thrill out of the forbidden. Quatre's eyes shone and Middie made no effort to banish her happy flush.

"What a situation, huh?" Quatre chuckled after a while, elbows on his knees.

There wasn't much to say to that. "Yeah."

"Trowa told me about -"

"Let's not talk about that," she cut in quickly. Whatever Trowa had to tell him about her that he didn't already know first-hand wasn't something she wanted to talk about just then.

"I'm just finding myself making more and more excuses every day," Quatre said, almost in a whisper. There was a longing in his eyes that made her heart clench painfully in her chest. "Every time I stop myself from touching your hair or kissing you there seems less to gain from lying to ourselves."

"Yeah," she murmured, feeling her face grow hot. She stared down at her hands, her fingers laced together as she fumbled her thumbs. "Look, I... I guess it's no good to use the war as a precedent, but my family is very important to me. I've made sacrifices on their behalf before. I can't in good conscience have my cake and eat it too, and I won't let you resort to favouritism to make it happen anyway."

He nodded, his eyes earnest and solemn, and for a while they pretended to be completely engrossed in the trapeze act.

"You and Trowa are a lot alike," he continued eventually. "I think I can see why the two of you... are the way you are together."

"Please, don't dance around the word clusterfuck on my account." Her smile was crooked. "I know it's messed up -"

"Not any more so than him and me."

A sideway glance. "Oh?"

"I'd rather not talk about that. Yet." He smiled, again with the air of apology. "I just think that rejecting the good that comes from a bad history is not the way to go."

There was no helping the wide, over-bright smile that bloomed on her face.

"Yeah." Her voice cracked a little. "That makes sense."

At some point during the show, their hands snuck up on each other and entwined, ever so tentatively. Their owners looked the other way and let them.

**I-oOo-I**

"Let's hit a bar," Trowa said when the show was over and he'd showered and changed. He shrugged on a jacket and threw his arms around their shoulders.

Several hours later, his arms were around their shoulders and his stumbling weight made them struggle to keep their footing, while he grinned stupidly at nothing in particular.

"Heavy... irresponsible... making a cripple carry you..." Middie grumbled.

"And a lightweight," Quatre chimed in hoarsely.

Trowa snickered. "Woulda thought a cripple 'n a lightweight woulda geddrunk faster... you ruined my master plan..."

"No, you did that all by yourself."

They managed to find the right trailer after bothering only one sleeping strong man and dumped Trowa into bed like the dead weight he was. Then they crashed on the couch together, no longer caring about being perfectly horizontal.

"I don't think I've ever seen him drink just to soothe his nerves before," Quatre observed.

"Those were nerves?"

"You're right, maybe not. Could've been giddiness."

"Giddiness about what?"

Middie gave up on the fight with gravity and sagged against Quatre's side. Her eyes slid shut as his wonderful warmth shifted and moulded to her body.

"Us," he said, hardly distracted. "This threesome thing he's been trying to set up. I can't tell what he's more excited about - you and me or the three of us together."

"He screwed that plan over nicely." She vaguely wondered if her mumbling was still audible, but couldn't bring herself to resist the lethargy and do anything about it. "I am not having sex with you drunk. Did that once, never again. Nearly lost an eye."

Quatre wouldn't have heard her one way or the other. "I think it's so sweet. I love him, I really love him, and it makes me so happy when he's happy. He likes you, you know. He's glad you two made up. I'm glad you two made up. Oh, man." A thought suddenly hit him. "I don't think I can drive home like this."

Middie snored.

That, he noticed. Grinning quite as brainlessly as Trowa had, he managed to get hands on his long overcoat and drape it over her like she was draped over him, without undraping anything along the way.

**I-oOo-I**

Trowa was one of those people blessed by the devil with the inability to have a hangover. Quatre and Middie hadn't been drunk enough to suffer any after effects either, but the fact of the matter was that it was so unfair it should be illegal. Besides, sleeping on the couch hadn't done them any favours, so they were perfectly within their rights to complain and blame it all on Trowa.

He took it in stride with a tranquil smirk. And lots of commentary.

Like: "He wants to kiss you, you know. He's got that look on his face that he gets when he wants to kiss someone real bad. I know, he wears it a lot around me. But he's not looking at me right now, see?"

"Has anyone ever explained to you just how insufferable you are? I could go into great detail," Middie said, but without much enthusiasm, opting to further dissect her mandarine instead.

Shooting Quatre a quick look, Trowa leaned over her chair, waited for her to turn toward him, and pressed a kiss to her cheek, her jaw, the side of her neck.

"Trowa."

He offered no resistance when she pushed him out of her personal space (shooting Quatre a look of her own). Shutting up was another story.

"You and Quatre is the only two-person combo that hasn't happened yet between the three of us. It's just not right."

Quatre's eyebrows furrowed and his cheeks coloured. "Trowa, I really don't think -"

"Oh, fuck you," Middie spat at the same time, suddenly out of patience for his attitude. She snatched up her belongings and stormed off.

"Go after her!" Trowa pulled Quatre up out of his chair.

He needn't have bothered.

"Middie!" He rushed after her, heedless of the remains of an early-morning rain shower soaking his socks. "Middie, please, can I say just one thing? Middie -"

Without warning, she turned around, grabbed him, pushed him against her car and kissed him on the mouth. He responded as only an involuntarily chaste lover could - they both did, clinging as tightly as a coiled spring, hands digging for purpose.

"It's not funny," she said into his collar some time later. She could feel his hard-on pressed between their bodies, but she didn't want them to separate and stop feeling it yet. "He thinks everything's so easy, he always has."

"It doesn't have to be complicated." Quatre cradled her face in his hands and looked at her as if he wished to transmit his feelings directly into her head. "We're both professionals, it won't affect our work performance except in a positive way. And I swear -" His voice and eyes became yet more intense. "- on my honour as a man and the name of my family, I won't play favourites and I won't - I won't hurt you, pressure you, or... Nothing has to change."

And she wished she could believe him. Out of anyone, anywhere, Quatre was the one person she would believe, if only she could believe _it_. But she didn't have a very good track record when it came to work floor 'romance', and part of her was simply afraid to.

There were just too many excuses she could make to avoid taking - oh, who was she kidding, _accepting_ - what she wanted so badly, and they were all just that tiny little bit too true.

She pushed him away.

He was pushed back.

Trowa had materialized without their noticing, pinning Quatre and Middie to the car with his body.

"I know what you're thinking," he told Middie. The look in his eyes said he actually did. "but you can trust Quatre. If it wasn't for him I'd still be the empty husk I was when we met. He's had a thousand chances to use and break me, but he has never once hurt me."

Quatre looked almost stricken. "Trowa..."

But Trowa wrapped an arm around his chest and a hand around the back of Middie's head, pulling her in for a kiss over Quatre's shoulder. She clung to Quatre's sides, breath stuck in her throat. Quatre caressed her face with the back of his fingers, and somehow, she ended up pressed between them, cheek to cheek to cheek.

"If you trust me, trust him. I'll be your excuse," Trowa said.

As it turned out, that did the trick.

**I-oOo-I**

They fell into bed like Trowa wasn't there. Maybe he really wasn't, but they had no eyes to spare for him, both so used to his presence in moments like this that it seemed of no consequence in the present circumstances.

Quatre threw himself onto the narrow bed and pulled Middie on top of him. She kissed him again, revelling in the novelty, made small, appreciative noises as he urged her closer against him. He already hard, she already wet, both fed up with the long months of UST, they wasted no time getting to the good parts. She pulled off his clothes and he scooted back, propped himself up against the headboard and pillows and held out his arms for her to settle into once she'd shed her own clothing.

They should probably have kept going after the mouthwash and _showered_ first, and she muttered a string of curses to that effect, but he didn't care, he'd lick the smell of bar from her inch by inch if he had to.

They moved into each other's moves. His tousled hair she tousled further, something she could have kept up forever if not for the lure of the muscles stretched stealthily over his lithe frame. The secrets hidden in the lines of his suits had been the subject of her fantasies for so long now, but as those things go, reality was much better. He was warm and firm and supple, and there were two signature scars of bullets to his shoulder and gut. Sliding her arms around him, she trailed her fingers up and down his back looking for exit wounds.

She wondered if he'd tell her about them. If he'd put two and two together yet and figured out just how long she'd done the job that had given her hers.

As if having read her mind, his hands left her waist, one moving down to her mangled knee and the other sliding down her arm to her wrist, which he caught and brought to his marked shoulder. I love you, he said, though later she couldn't remember if he'd even opened his mouth; and knowing what secrets you keep won't make me love you any less.

Middie attached fiercely, but the words that came with it always frightened her.

Digging one knee into the mattress, she swallowed his surprised cry in a kiss. By the time he came undone, she mumbled a half-formed I love you too into his shoulder.

**I-oOo-I**

"I think we owe Trowa one," Quatre murmured fondly, looking over her shoulder to where their third stood propped up against the doorframe.

Middie didn't think he'd meant it that way, but she turned and raised an inviting eyebrow, and when Trowa came, turned it on Quatre. "Are you as voyeuristic as he is?"

She guessed they were all feeling brave that day, because he grinned back. "I think I am."

"You two are so fucking beautiful," Trowa all but growled.

He crowded over them like he'd done outside, kissing first Quatre, then Middie, and damn but she loved him, too. He wrapped his arms around her stomach, and Quatre wrapped his arms around her back, and they leaned together over her shoulder to kiss, their warmth engulfing her on all sides. Middie panted into Quatre's neck while Trowa brought himself over the long-awaited edge, even more impatient than she and Quatre had been. Quatre's hand was on him as it happened, then shifted to her again to make her back arch like a bow and her breath hitch against Trowa's mouth.

Ever the post-coital snorlax, Trowa's eyes were already half-lidded when he moved off of them and rolled onto his back.

He landed squarely on his ass beside the bed.

"Maybe my place next time," Quatre quipped.

**I-oOo-I**

Quatre's place was every bit the improvement they needed. His bed was big enough for every ecstatically thrashing limb and boneless flop, and best of all, someone else would be washing the dirty sheets.

"Promise me one thing," Trowa said afterward. For once, he was wide awake. "Don't be prudes while I'm gone. I don't want to be the only thing keeping you together."

Middie and Quatre exchanged glances, the flush of exertion and affection still on their faces.

"We'll figure it out."

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**PSAN:** Pokémon names are totally a valid tool for metaphor.

The sexually explicit parts of this fic have been severely toned down to comply with FFN's rating restrictions. If you're interested in the uncensored version, you can find it here (just take out the three spaces): htt p:/ /archiveofourown. org/works/313457


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